Summer wild boar hunting in Poland
Not everyone enjoys wild boar hunting in August. Why?
– all the crops are still high which does not help identification and shot placement
– sows are protected until the 15th and it is easy to make a mistake and orphan dependent young
It is much easier and more productive to wait a bit and hunt the following month when the crops are cut especially September full moon is considered the best time for wild boar stalking. But I still like wild boar hunting during July and August even though it is not as effective as a night on a stubble. However, it is important to be 100% sure about the sex and size of the pig and resist temptation of pulling the trigger too quickly. It is easy to convince yourself there are no piglets around and a single boar is small youngster, but when you try to get closer you notice the crop the pig is in is chest high in wet places and knee high in other. This makes sizing not as easy as it seems and it is very easy to misjudge the size. I once shot 80kg boar when I thought it was 30kg pig, I also many times stalked what I thought was a single animal and bumped on more pigs. Sexing is another important thing and to be sure you have to watch and listen carefully. It pays dividend to watch wild boar and understand their group structure. It will be easier later on to identify sows, yearlings and boars. Listening carefully is as much important and a sow chasing off a yearling, calling in piglets, a boar snorting and yearlings biting and fighting with another yearling all give clues to identify the quarry. When not sure, it is better to leave them for another day.
When summer starts wild boar move from crop to crop depending on how ripe it is. They start with rye, but quickly move to wheat when it gets into milk development stages. Usually when the oats get into milk development phase of ripening pigs also move from wheat to oats and in my area this is their favorite food until the oats get into hard grain and they move to maze which is a completely different story…
Hunting in the oats
My father-in-law took me out to a nice oats field surrounded by a forest. The filed was in a sorry state and we could see wild boar tracks everywhere. We got there one morning and and we saw a couple of sows and piglets that soon got our wind. Following morning we sat on a high seat and again spotted some pigs in the crop but it was still too dark to be sure what it was when we noticed a group of yearling boar coming out of the forest and getting to the oats through a grass field. We could clearly see it was 7-8 yearlings and no sows or piglets with them.
We stalked along the field and went up another high seat to have a better view. They were not too far away and when we were sure these were the same pigs I pulled the trigger and one boar dropped to .30-06. All the pigs but one ran to the wood. The one that ran different direction paused and was looking lost in the middle of the field. I pulled the trigger again and it dropped to the shot too.
We could hear the second pig scream after the shot so we rushed down the ladder and to the second pig, but fortunately the shot went high but the bullet also smashed lungs not only spine and the pig was already dead. The first shot was also a bit high and as we discovered later on the rifle was shooting too high…
Both pigs were about 35kg and idea for the table.
Hunting wild boar video
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